Archipelago of the Sun [Paperback]

In the concluding volume of her enormously popular, mind-expanding, and cheerfully dystopian trilogy, Yoko Tawadas intrepid young band of friends strike out in search of the lost Land of Sushi Tawada is immune to the seduction of ideal worlds. Even when speculative, her fiction still manages to operate in the world that we actually inhabit: one characterized by slippages, ambiguity, and a history of territorial entanglements that began long before twentieth-century globalismentanglements that, in fact, go back so far that they might be one of the few things coterminous with being human. Tawadas playful and deeply inventive new novel & succeeds brilliantly, sketching a grim global dilemma with the sort of wit and humanism that Italo Calvino, in a discussion of lightness in literature, described as weightless gravity. Even ones mother tongue is a translation. Proof that thoughtful novels of ideas can be fun as well as provocative. Tawada again proffers linguistic illuminations. Consider this a recommendation for the whole series, frankly. Its three slim books craft a winningly genial kind of dystopia, bleak and earnest in equal measure. A strange, meandering, but compelling tale that combines pin-sharp interpersonal observations with an ambiguous, blurry backdrop. Intellectually provocative and utterly charming: Nothing short of triumphant... No matter who is narrating, Margaret Mitsutanis masterful translation from Japanese ensures Tawadas whimsy seeps through.